10 Nuke Plants Tripped (NERC Early Bulletin)

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NORTH AMERICAN ELECTRIC RELIABILITY COUNCIL

August 14, 2003 Power Outages - Announcement

Starting at about 4:15 PM EDT, major losses of electric load
occurred in the northeastern U.S. and Canada in the Eastern
Interconnection. No cause is known at present, but the outages
do not appear to be the result of a terrorist attack.

The areas most affected center around the Great Lakes plus New
York City, northern New Jersey and parts of New England. We do
not know if these blackouts are related for sure, but it is
likely.

The following load was lost (approximate numbers):

PJM Interconnection - 4,200 MW

Midwest ISO - 13,000 MW

Hydro Quebec - 100 MW

Ontario IMO - 20,000 MW

ISO New England - 2,500 MW

New York ISO - 22,000 MW

Total - 61,800 MW Lost (approximate)

Total Restored as 7:30 p.m. EDT

PJM - 800 MW

HQ - 40 MW

ISO NE - 500 MW

Total 1340 MW Restored

In Ohio, Perry Nuclear plant went off-line. Major transmission
lines were out of service at the time of the disruption. It
appears that ten nuclear plants went offline, probably as a
result of fluctuations in frequency.

Although the event was felt throughout the entire Eastern
Interconnection, the south and midwestern US were not affected.

NERC is having regular conference calls among the NERC
reliability coordinators and will provide additional information
as we know more.

We do not know the cause of the disturbances at present but will
continue to evaluate the situation throughout the evening.

8/14/2003 8:02 PM

We had a blackout from 4:15 until after dark on Thursday. Then on Friday afternoon, First Energy caused a "rolling blackout" in my town for over an hour. Generation was still only up to 75% capacity yesterday.